Energy management: Work Smart and become smarter at efficiency

Get PC about Enterprise Efficiency

I was looking at Microsoft’s Green Blog only the other day and it struck me that when it comes to energy management, however much we try to be green and reduce our power consumption on appliances, actually it was the construction of the device that accounts for the majority of its environmental footprint. Of course the best energy management solution is not to have the device at all. Ultimately we should work smarter and not over-provision ourselves. This is all too common a challenge in large enterprises and data centers too. At 1E, we are pioneering how to tackle efficiency through identifying unused software and unnecessary hardware, which can be recycled, decommissioned, or better still not be bought in the first place.

Do you know which desktops aren’t being used?

In our IT Energy Management Solution, NightWatchman Enterprise, the PC Estate Profiler identifies used PCs by date and location. User interaction is measured through keyboard and mouse activity for a defined number of minutes every hour and this information is sent to a central reporting server.

This data gives a company the ability to see the number of desks in each building (per floor/ subnet) that are being used or not, and will highlight deficiencies. It would be an extremely hard task to obtain any meaningful data if this was manually monitored due to home working, and the time it would take to collate this information every day.

The ability to report on hardware utilization is an extremely useful strategic decision-making tool. It shows up trends on usage and Facilities and Property Management teams can look into using their office space smarter, by providing hot desks and using existing facilities more effectively, lower the energy footprint, and ultimately reduce costs for the business. Additionally it can be used to create power policies that are in tune with user behaviour.

How many of your servers are idling?

Energy management doesn’t confine itself to desktops. Using 1E’s ‘Useful Work’ technology, as part of an unused server software solution, AppClarity can determine whether server software is doing any useful work. In fact one in six of all servers is not doing anything at all except for some housekeeping tasks such as virus scanning or receiving software updates, none of which is providing value to the business – in fact quite the reverse. AppClarity identifies costly unused software which can be reclaimed which enables the server to be reassigned or decommissioned. Here again, this intelligence leads to a rationalized server environment and better energy management.

Nomad 2012 has a great track record in enabling cost avoidance by reducing servers. Nomad 2012’s Peer-to-Peer (P2P) based distribution and redundancy mechanisms allows an organization to dramatically reduce infrastructure servers by 95% or more, without introducing any risks such as a single point of failure or client overhead. Such an example is Saint-Gobain which had a 97% reduction in expected branch server investment thanks to deploying Nomad, and was able to cut the number of necessary branch servers from 6000 to 200.

Informed decisions, improved bottom line

Ultimately, once you are armed with the right information and visibility into your hardware and software estate you can make a difference. Software that makes efficiencies, saves you money and reduces your environmental footprint must be a no-brainer.